Beneath the surface of all EU regulations, under the shadows of many thousands of different laws there’s a war, a stark conflict inside the borders of European Union. It’s an economic war, fought year after year in Bruxelles and in all the EU capitals, no matter what government is actually in power.
Cyprus
The Cyprus bailout
At the very last moment a plan has been approved in order to save Cyprus from bankrupcy. Why am I not surprised? A few days ago I write another about this situation, the basic idea was to stigmatize that ten billion Euro are small money if we consider the hundreds of billions (or maybe the thousands) Euro already used to save other countries and/or their major banks.
Cyprus is not the real problem about Eurozone, nor it’s the worst place to consider when it comes to bad finance all aroud Europe. What is Cyprus today? A symbol. It’s a slap in the face of russian oligarchs, who used for years this small island to practice money laundering on a massive scale. It’s a slap in the face of a number of financial operators who used the fiscal laws of Cyprus to pay the lowest tax cut possible in Europe. It’s a warning, a strong one, to Malta (and thru Malta to the UK).
What Cyprus is today it’s a warning to all of us european citizens. The decision to drag a percentile of bank deposits, no matter how much, it’s not only a financial measure made by a scared government but the demonstration that under the combinate pressure of ECB, IMF and WB there are very few chances to escape their decisions. In Italy we already experienced such a fate, back in the ’90s. In order to get enough money to pay the interests on our national debt the government got a small cut, 6 part on one thousand, from every bank account.
So, what about tomorrow? What France will do later this year when the pressure of foreign investors will try to crush its economy? What Slovenia will do next month to lift the pressure of a compromised economy?
The Cyprus setback
Here we are, once again, facing the overheated financial markets. Ready to debate for days or weeks about a new economic crisis and all the perils for a new crash in the world economy. For what? Cyprus, no less.
A small island with a GDP of 24 billions USD. Less than a million of citizens. Safe heaven for money laundering and well-known for its policy of “don’t ask, don’t tell” about capitals. It’s true, they’re bankrupting and another hard plan of recovery has been prepared to the rescue. Ten billion Euro ready to be deployed to save the national administration.
In the last five years BCE and IMF erogated hundreds (if not thousands) of billions Euro to save or sustain national economies and/or european-based banks “too big to fall“. Why all the fuss about ten billions Euro? What kind of danger poses a small economy like Cyprus? It looks like smoke and mirrors once again, noise good for the media.
European finance advisors put up their hard face, dictate another batch of memorandums about where to cut in the welfare and in all areas of public expenditure. A massive drag from the bank accounts will be made (in Italy we remember quite well this kind of tax, it has been done in the ’90s) and, once again, a massive output of capitals already leaved the island, well before the drag. The bill is set on the 99%, never on the 1%.
We will have another week of bad news from the rating agencies, more or less the same from BCE, IMF and WB. As I’ve written before, it’s all smoke and mirrors. The real problem is how to get out of the crisis, how to restart the engine of an economic model that’s working no more. Remember the riots in the Eastern Europe, all the demonstrations in Portugal, Greece and Spain. Under the pressure of unemployment and the fears for a major breakdown, even the most pacific people are on a warpath.
Where are the plans for a better tomorrow? When we will see the likes of Angela Merkel and David Cameron explain the road for an economic improvement?
Angelo Benuzzi 